The present invention relates generally to a socket contact for an electrical connector and, more particularly, to a one-piece hooded socket contact.
Conventional hooded socket contacts for electrical connectors are formed of two pieces, namely, a hood and a contact body. The hood is usually formed of stainless steel and the body is formed of topper, or a copper alloy. The hood is pressed onto the body by complex machines. Such a contact is relatively expensive to produce.
In order to reduce the cost of a hooded socket contact, it is desirable to eliminate the separate hood, and form the contact out of one piece of metal. Such a one-piece hooded socket contact is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,139,256 to Seidler. Seidler teaches the forming of the spring fingers of the contact by making U-shaped cuts in the sheet metal blank from which the contact is formed, behind the forward edge of the blank. This results in a limited number of spring fingers being available to make electrical engagement with the mating pin contact.
In my copending U.S. application Ser. No. 08/546,179 (Case No. C-CCD-0140), filed Oct. 20, 1995, entitled One-Piece Hooded Socket Contact and Method of Producing Same, assigned to the assignee of the present application, there is disclosed a one-piece hooded socket contact that is formed from a sheet metal blank that is stamped to provide at its forward end a plurality of spring fingers and relatively short lead-in tabs that extend forwardly from the front edge of the blank. The fingers and tabs are bent rearwardly and then the blank is rolled into cylindrical form to form the hood of the contact. The fingers extend inwardly toward the center axis of the hood to form the contact beams for engaging a mating pin contact, and the short lead-in tabs, together with the forward portions of the fingers, provide a lead-in chamfer for the pin contact. Because of the manner in which the fingers and tabs are initially formed in the sheet metal blank, it is relatively easy to roll the sheet metal to form the hood, and maintain the circular shape of the front end of the hood and the lead-in chamfer, and of the spring fingers of the contact, even for a relatively small contact, for example, size 16 (1.5 mm) or size 20 (1 mm) contacts. However, because of the provision of the lead-in tabs in such socket contact, the number of spring fingers that may be incorporated in the contact is limited.
It is the object of the present invention to provide a one-piece hooded socket contact that provides not only a lead-in entry for the mating pin contact, but also permits the incorporation of a large number of spring fingers in the contact for making multiple engagement points with the mating pin contact.